7:00pm Screening of OR-7 the Journey with filmmaker Clemens Schenk. Amaroq Weiss of the Center for Biological Diversity will be part of the Q&A session following the film. Tickets cost $10 and can be bought online at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1634194

They can also be purchased at the door-cash only.
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2:00pm activist Oliver Starr will discuss the reasons for the sharp decline in gray wolf populations in Denali National Park in Alaska and offer remedies.

3:00pm Brian Ertz, founder and Board President of Wildlands Defense, will discuss the failure of the controversial McKittrick Policy and why it needs to be reformed.

BREAK

6:30pm doors open with live music by Matt Stone.

7:00pm Camilla Fox, founder and Executive Director of Project Coyote, will discuss current efforts to end wildlife killing contests on public and private lands.

A panel discussion will follow with Amaroq Weiss, West Coast Wolf Organizer of the Center for Biological Diversity, Kevin Bixby, founder and Executive Director of the Southwest Environmental Center, and author/ecologist George Wuerthner.

The entire program on Saturday is free.
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Sunday August 9

9:00am doors open with music by Goodshield Aguilar.

9:30am Mike Mease, co-founder and Board President of Buffalo Field Campaign, will discuss the continued hazing and slaughter of wild buffalo in/around Yellowstone National Park and efforts to list the species under the Endangered Species Act.

10:30am Louisa Willcox, wildlife advocate and long-time conservationist, will discuss the government’s ill-conceived push to remove federal protections for grizzly bears and examine the role that states play in wildlife management.

RIP Cecil: 10 Photos of One of the Most Beautiful Lions who Ever Lived

On the 1st of July, a beautiful 13 year old male lion was shot and killed in Zimbabwe. His name was Cecil.

This is not a post about the man who shot him… twice, or the guides who allegedly lured the beautiful creature out of the safety of Hwange National Park so he could be killed and then destroyed his GPS collar after skinning and beheading him.

Nor is this a post about the 40 hours Cecil survived after being shot with an arrow, fleeing his pursuers before they caught and finished him off with a rifle. You can read all about that a million places online and watch as your blood boils or try to keep the tears from welling up in your eyes.

This is a photographic tribute to one of the most beautiful animals in the world. This is anger, sadness, and respect… in pictures. Rest in Peace Cecil.

Shock, shock! Once again the “coyote excuse” is used by a trophy hunter to dodge any charges for killing an endangered wolf. The Utah hunter who senselessly gunned down Echo won’t be held accountable for her death because according to the USFWS:

Prosecutors tasked with making the final decision didn’t have evidence to prove the hunter knew he was shooting a wolf, meaning they fell short of reaching the burden created by the long-standing McKittrick policy, said U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch.

Under that policy, hunters who kill wolves get off unless authorities can prove they knew they were shooting a wolf.

So let me get this straight, the USFWS will not hold this person accountable for killing an endangered wolf because they can’t prove he didn’t know it was a coyote? Are they freaking kidding me? How many times will the “coyote excuse” be used to kill endangered wolves? There is no way to tell if a person is lying about this. Of course he’s going to try to save his own skin by saying he didn’t know it was a wolf. The “coyote excuse” is used all the time.

This coyote killing hunter didn’t just kill any wolf but the first wolf to disperse to the Grand Canyon in 70 years. This wolf didn’t belong to him. This hunter robbed the American people, he seemed to think it was his right to kill. And I don’t believe for one second he didn’t know it was a wolf. Wolves are distinctive, they’re large and tall, easily distinguishable from coyotes. And BTW, it’s not OK to kill coyotes either.

How about this USFWS, if anyone shoots an endangered wolf they get jail time period! Forget the excuses!

This is why the USFWS wants to delist wolves nationally, so hunters can shoot any wolf, anytime, anywhere. This will stop wolf recovery in its tracks. Exactly what the USFWS and Obama administration wants.

Echo was special, she traveled hundreds of miles to reach the Grand Canyon, searching for a mate and was murdered by a trophy hunter.

The USFWS is a joke when it comes to wolves. They’ve done almost nothing to protect them. A complete disgrace.

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Hunter who killed wolf seen at Grand Canyon won’t be charged

Brady McCombs, Associated Press3:04 p.m. MST July 10, 2015

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah hunter who killed the first gray wolf seen near the Grand Canyon in seven decades won’t face criminal charges because he thought he was shooting a coyote, U.S. Fish and Wildlife announced Thursday.

The federal agency’s investigation concluded the hunter didn’t intentionally shoot the wolf, which is protected in Utah under the Endangered Species Act. The man, whose name was not released, realized his mistake after he saw the dead animal and immediately reported it to authorities, according to a news release. In Utah, anybody can hunt coyotes.

The 3-year-old female wolf — named “Echo” in a nationwide student contest — captured the attention of wildlife advocates across the county because it was so rare to see the animal near the Grand Canyon.

The wolf was shot in December in southern Utah. The Fish and Wildlife Service did DNA tests to confirm the wolf was the one seen roaming near the Grand Canyon’s North Rim and nearby forest earlier that year.

Fish and Wildlife officials said in the release that the case is a good reminder that all hunters should “identify their target before pulling the trigger.”

Investigators spoke with a hunter the man was with, reviewed other records and went in with their “eyes wide open” to make sure the man was being honest in saying he didn’t know it was a wolf, said Dan Rolince, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assistant special agent in charge of law enforcement for the region.

Prosecutors tasked with making the final decision didn’t have evidence to prove the hunter knew he was shooting a wolf, meaning they fell short of reaching the burden created by the long-standing McKittrick policy, said U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch.

Under that policy, hunters who kill wolves get off unless authorities can prove they knew they were shooting a wolf.

That makes the burden of proof too high and undercuts the protections of the Endangered Species Act, said Michael Robinson with the Center for Biological Diversity. He is one of many wildlife advocates who called the wolf’s death heartbreaking and said they wanted the hunter prosecuted. They said the animal could have helped wolves naturally recover in remote regions of Utah and neighboring states.

Robinson argues the policy should be changed.

“You can get a ‘Get out of jail free card’ by saying the magic words,” Robinson said. “Those are: ‘I thought it was coyote.'”

Robinson also laid blame on Utah state officials for not doing more to inform the public that the wolf may be roaming through the state.

State officials have said they are planning to address that by teaching hunters how to tell the difference between a wolf and a coyote during an orientation for a county program that offers people $50 per coyote. The man who shot this wolf was not registered for the program, officials said.

Iconic wolf OR7 and his mate are believed to be rearing their second set of puppies. So good to see this little family thriving when there is so much bad news in the wolf world. Many howls and love to you Journey!

New Year Brings New Pups To OR-7 Wolf Pack

Oregon’s wandering wolf’s lonely days are far behind after biologists found evidence that OR-7’s Rogue Pack has expanded by a second set of pups.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife released a video from trail cameras Tuesday that shows the new wolves playing in the Cascades east of Medford, which ODFW shared on its Oregon Wildlife Viewing Facebook page.

Like this:

July 6, 2015

It’s important to remember why we need wolves!

This was one of my early posts from the fall of 2009. Wolves were being hunted in Idaho and Montana for the first time since their near extermination in the lower 48.

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October 29, 2009

Wolves effect their surroundings and bring life to the lands they inhabit. For sixty years elk browsed the meadows of the North Fork of the Flathead, in Montana. Their adversary, canis lupus, who had chased them through time, was gone, hunted to extinction in the West.

Then the wolf came home to it’s native habitat and dispersed the elk. This brought back the aspen and willow, young shoots no longer trampled under the complacent elk’s hooves. With the aspen came the songbirds and other wildlife.

Once more the circle was complete with the return of the great canine, the wolf.

“Aspen ecosystems are considered some of the finest and richest songbird habitat on the continent, second only to river-bottom riparian zones. Remove the wolf, and you remove the songbirds. Remove the songbirds, and the bugs move in. Everything changes, top to bottom, right down to the dirt”…..Cristina Eisenberg, Oregon State University researcher

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Wolves Increase Biodiversity And Greatly Benefit The Ecosystems They Inhabit

They lead to more songbirds. Better trout habitat. More game birds. Less insects. Better soil. Fewer coyotes. Wilder elk. More aspen trees.

Wolves, in essence, are key to a healthy landscape.

So says biologist Christina Eisenberg in a fascinating Missoulianarticle on the effect of wolves — and their absence — on an ecosystem.

Eisenberg has been studying the top-to-bottom effect of wolves — called a “trophic cascade” — in Glacier National Park for years. She’s also been researching ecosystems near St. Mary’s, Montana, and in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada.

“Each study site is about the same size, and each has a similarly large elk population, native to an aspen-based winter range, and each has the same general density of cougars and bears.” The difference between the sites is the number of resident wolves: St. Mary’s has none, Waterton some, and Glacier many.

Her findings on the much heateddebate over wolves and elk mirror what others have found: there are plenty of elk in the Northern Rockies, but the return of wolves has made the elk behave again like wild elk:

The North Fork, Eisenberg said, is “full of wolves,” and has been for 20 years now. It’s also full of elk – as many as 14 elk per square kilometer in this meadow, where the wolf den site is located. Elk scat litters the ground not 20 yards from the den.

Clearly, the wolves aren’t eating all the elk. But aside from the tracks and the scat and the bones and the antlers, there are no elk to be seen.

“They’ve totally changed their behavior,” Eisenberg said. “For 60 years we’ve become used to complacent elk. These elk aren’t complacent. They’re on high alert.”

From a browse standpoint, that means elk eat a bit and move on, eat a bit and move on, never standing in one place long enough to eat a tree down to its roots. And from a human standpoint, it means hunters see far fewer elk even as state wildlife officials insist Montana has more deer and elk than it’s had for years.

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Hunters, of course, prefer elk that aren’t quite so wily, but trophic cascades work both ways in wildlife management. Remove the wolves, and elk are easier to find. But then coyote populations explode, eating their way through the local game-bird population. Enhance one hunting opportunity, and you affect another.

And from a bigger viewpoint than just elk, Eisenberg has found that wolves increase biodiversity and greatly benefit the overall health of the areas they inhabit:

Remove the wolves, she said, and you lose the birds.

Remove the wolves, she said, and the coyotes fill the niche. The coyotes eat the ground squirrels, and so the meadows don’t get “plowed,” and soil productivity declines.

Remove the wolves, she said, and the deer eat the river-bottom willows, and the bull trout lose both their shade and their food, as insects no longer fall from overhanging brush.

Remove the wolves, she said, “and everything changes.”

Why is this so noteworthy?

Because the places with greatest biodiversity are the places most resilient, most able to adapt to, say, changing climate.

Is this what President Obama want to take us back to? Dear President Obama,

I am writing you this letter as a simple citizen and wildlife advocate. I do not have access to big money donors, political parties, or special interest groups. Because of that this letter may not even be read by you or your staff, but I am going to try anyway.

Mr. President, I write this letter as a once hopeful but now jaded person that considers myself as a political progressive. This is especially true when it comes to the protection of the environment and our wildlife. When you were running for office and upon your eventual election there was an overwhelming sense of hope that you were going to be the environmental president that we have longed for since the days of Bruce Babbitt and the Clinton Administration. Those hopes began to dim upon your…

June 5, 2015

MEN often face pressure to measure up as alpha males, to “wolf up” as it were. Alpha male connotes the man who at every moment demonstrates that he’s in total control in the home, and who away from home can become snarling and aggressive.

This alpha male stereotype comes from a misunderstanding of the real thing. In fact, the male wolf is an exemplary male role model. By observing wolves in free-living packs in Yellowstone National Park, I’ve seen that the leadership of the ranking male is not forced, not domineering and not aggressive to those on his team.

“The main characteristic of an alpha male wolf,” the veteran wolf researcher Rick McIntyre told me as we were watching gray wolves, “is a quiet confidence, quiet self-assurance. You know what you need to do; you know what’s best for your pack. You lead by example…

The population of Alexander Archipelago wolves on Prince Wales Island/Tongass National Forest has declined 60% in 0ne year. The plan to log old growth forest on the island must be halted to save these wolves.

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Imperiled Wolf Population on Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island Crashes

From Center for Biological Diversity

For Immediate Release, June 5, 2015

SITKA, Alaska— State and federal authorities are reporting a “dramatic decline in the wolf population on Prince of Wales Island, Tongass National Forest.” A new report records a 60 percent drop in the number of Alexander Archipelago wolves in just one year, reinforcing conservationists’ arguments that plans to log old-growth forests on the island should be halted to protect the wolf and other wildlife.

An Alaska Department of Fish and Game draft report estimates a total of only 89 wolves in the area — including 60 on the main island — compared with 220 only a year ago. That estimate was cited in a May 29 briefing paper by the U.S. Forest Service — whose approval of the Big Thorne timber sale on the island is being challenged in court by Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups. The Forest Service warns the new data “increases the probability of [an Endangered Species Act] listing and will almost certainly become a factor in ongoing litigation against timber sales.”

“This sudden and dramatic decline of Alexander Archipelago wolves on Prince of Wales is scary,” said the Center’s Alaska Director Rebecca Noblin. “Our efforts to save the wolves may prove too little, too late unless the Fish and Wildlife Service takes these numbers to heart and protects the wolves under the Endangered Species Act. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

The revelations come as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works toward a year-end determination on whether to list the Alexander Archipelago wolf as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, in response to a petition filed by Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity. Threats to the Alexander Archipelago wolf all stem from old-growth forest habitat loss to logging and human access to formerly remote places on the extensive system of logging roads. Right now, primary wolf habitat on Prince of Wales lays in the path of the Big Thorne timber project, a major old-growth logging effort that is being challenged in the Ninth Circuit court of appeals.

“The new information is shocking and tragic,” said Larry Edwards of Greenpeace, who has worked on wolf issues in the region for over a decade. “A one-year 60 percent drop in population is bad enough, but the critical problem is that the Prince of Wales area population had already been reduced to a very low number. Now, the number is in the red zone.”

Worse yet, the 89-wolf estimate is already outdated, the Forest Service briefing paper indicates. The “estimates were made prior to the 2014/2015 hunting and trapping season, wherein 29 animals were known to be taken. This further reduces the likely population.”

The wolves on Prince of Wales and its associated islands are geographically isolated and genetically distinct from other Alexander Archipelago wolves, which themselves are a subspecies of gray wolves. Recent genetic research shows that a large portion of genetic diversity in the gray wolf species is found in Alexander Archipelago wolves, making them especially important from a conservation perspective.

The information on the new population estimate comes from a Forest Service briefing paper that summarizes the content of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s report. The briefing paper was provided to Greenpeace yesterday. The final report will likely be issued next week.

“After we see the full report, we will decide what actions to take,” Edwards said. “I testified to the Board of Game in January, after hearing the Department of Fish and Game’s presentation on these wolves. I said the board should close the season until the next board cycle, three years from now. That was not done, even though a crisis seemed obvious already. We are prepared to ask the Department’s commissioner for an emergency order blocking the 2015/2016 season.”

The Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace filed the petition to protect Alexander Archipelago wolves under the Endangered Species Act in 2011. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made a preliminary determination last year that listing the species “may be warranted.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 900,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Wolf 253, the beloved Yellowstone Druid wolf named Limpy, who was shot and killed in March 08, on the very day ESA protections were lifted for the gray wolf, by the then Bush Administration.